Closing the Brand Equity Gap of Investment and Realized Return

Over the past couple of decades, health systems have made substantial investments in brand building. Many have succeeded in creating stronger brand awareness. Some have improved market position. Only a few, however, have fully realized the substantial, measurable advantage of a fully activated brand strategy.

What these brands leaders have discovered is that:

Strong brands influence consumer choice

Strong brands attract and retain the best talent

Strong brands create contracting, partnering leverage

Strong brands shape referral patterns

Strong brands build customer loyalty

Strong brands better weather economic cycles

The gap between investments in a brand and realized return cannot be closed with brand advertising alone; nor, can it be resolved by customer service, clinical quality, lean operations and other initiatives pursued in isolation of a comprehensive, integrated approach to better leverage the outcomes for market advantage. Greater share. Increased volumes. Better profitability. Customer loyalty.

The only way to narrow the brand equity gap is to effect strategic, operational, clinical, physician and marketing alignment to create and deliver a meaningful, differentiating and durable brand value proposition. Brand alignment builds the brand-driven culture that transforms an organization from one that simply ‘promotes a brand’ to one that ‘delivers the brand.’